Hi @sionwhellens there are two features around pinning on the roadmap, one for admins to pin a discussion to the top of a group, and another for users to star discussions across any of their groups.

Where do you see the potential confusion?

Looking really good. I think you've pretty much nailed it for an initial iteration.

I personally found the options in "When would you like to be emailed?" a little bit mind-bendy, but that might be just me.

thanks @jonlemmon - any suggestions for improved options in those email settings?

@alanna sure. I think this would make more sense to me:

Email me...

• A daily summary email of any discussions I’ve missed
• When a proposal is created or about to close
• When someone mentions me
• When there is new activity in discussions I’m watching

If I follow a public group, will it show under 'groups' ?

Great question @stevenpalmer - right now you can only follow groups you are a member of, but your question points to the next step in this development :)

I'm interested in:

• what happens when i unfollow a conversation then someone at-mentions me
• is there a case for 'passively followed' versus 'explicitly followed' (thinking of this in relation to detected versus selected locale)
• what does the inbox conversation look like with each message update i get (do i get the prior two messages as a reminder if context or just one message)

I might be thick but when I first read "Unread" I thought it was a verb like Unsubscribe". Could you use "Not Read" instead?
I quite liked the "Watching" instead of "Following". I am fed up with following people...

Thanks @mixirving

• When you unfollow a conversation and someone mentions you, you will be following it again. That might be a problem we that want to fix, or it might be minor.
• 'Followed' can be true, false, or nil - does that answer your question?
• The emailed conversation looks just like a Github email thread: all the messages will share the same subject line so they will be stacked together into one thread. By default, you will get the 'new discussion' email, then if someone mentions you, you will receive every subsequent piece of activity as a new email on that same thread.

Thanks for that feedback @johnbrooker, it's good to hear what words make sense. We started with 'Watching' and got a fair amount of push-back from different sources saying 'Following' makes more sense :)

I haven't quite got my head around how many emails I could end up getting a day with this new feature. Any chance that at some stage, the followed conversation could be shuffled to the top of the "Yesterday on Loomio" emails?

Ok, We're live. Expect a bit more of an announcement soon.

Suggestion: For the inbox filter "unread" I would like to clear the unread so I can see what is new.

Or is that already possible?

Also, previously, weren't the unread separated into the groups?

I will start marking the discussions I wish to follow.

Thanks @lbjoum - keep the feedback coming! We know it won't be perfect the very first try and it's useful to know what improvements people think are important.

Things I want to fix immediately:

• make it more obvious how to clear the filters
• make a 'mark as read' button

How would people feel about removing the (Loomio) from the from field in
emails?

@robertguthrie What would the new email look like? Would it just say "notifications@loomio.org"

I'm feeling a real need to hide a group from my dashboard, just as i could
from inbox.

So taking a stab at an implementation, how about on the group page, rather
than following on/off. We have "Hidden, Normal, Following" selector for
"volume" or "notification level" of the group.

I'm sure there are plenty of others who don't want to leave a group, but
don't want to track it on their dashboard either.

Yeah not being able to clear things from particular groups is annoying. Since the change to the new system it has suddenly picked up loads of old comments from groups like loomio community and I'm unable to remove the threads from my dashboard without viewing each one individually.

Sorry about that Sean. We'll add a mark as read button real soon!

Just realized people are probably not yet following the Loomio code group. Feedback:
https://www.loomio.org/d/n0bJBwqZ/notification-label-on-inbox-needs-to-reflect-filter

I'd like to suggest the following button breaks intuition a little:

normally a button is a verb, and describes the action that will happen when you click it.
This button describes a state instead... and you have to intuit what clicking it might do

further, because you're expecting it to be an action, you might guess that this button would do not following ... so is this the 'unfollow' button ... but with bad english .. or a toggle?

Then your suggesting 'unfollow'?

That's one solution.

Or a field which shows state and a button which toggles between them

e.g.
[following] [on | off]

@jonlemmon do you have any thoughts re: "Not following" "Following" on the buttons?

alert(hello)

sorry @joopkieftelapingvi , I don't understand.
This is a thread about the new 'following' feature.

are you asking a question about when some translation work will be merged? please feel free to email me about that : mix@loomio.org

@mixirving do you think your experience of the "state button" (as opposed to "verb button") might be improved if it responded to you immediately when you clicked it?

No, i think it's the styling that's confusing. Button generally suggests
action.

The filter buttons for unread work because of their different size, page
position, and the excellent minimal use of the framing word 'filter'.
They're also showing a toggle type situation.

I think if you wanted to do auto change, then you could use a star you can
click, that toggles like the gmail one AND also toggles the grey word
'following/ not following'.
Would be easy to glance at and read one you knew the symbol but might be
messy on page

@robertguthrie yeah, I think it should say Follow/Unfollow. And keep the icon the same the whole time (the speaker with all the bars visible).

I feel a bit swamped by Loomio emails now, but worried about 'unfollowing' discussions I care about (but still only want to see once a day either by visiting loomio or getting the Yesterday on Loomio email).

Matt, try following them but turning off emails for each comment

Me too! Having said that... Here I am, in my inbox, replying to a Loomio
comment 1 min after it happened. That's pretty cool!! And as soon as I
click Send + Archive button, it's gone from my inbox!

Otherwise, if we keep it a "state button" then I think it needs to be a dropdown with descriptions, like the way they do it in Discourse.

GitHub's watch button is really interesting because it's actually a hybrid of the two approaches.

@alanna Thanks, but I do still want to get emailed when people at-mention me (because that's much more likely to benefit from my immediate attention than other random activity in threads I follow).

@robertguthrie Ah, I just checked out twitter, and I like their approach the best for the following button:

Follow/Following/Unfollow

The button goes a highlighted colour once you're following, and when you hover over it it goes red and shows "Unfollow".

With this approach you could still keep the helper text underneath the button basically the same.

@matthewbartlett @alanna yes, this is why earlier in this discussion I suggested untangling those two options by making email settings the following:

Email me…

• A daily summary email of any discussions I’ve missed
• When a proposal is created or about to close
• When someone mentions me
• When there is new activity in discussions I’m watching

Unfollowed discussions will be included in the Yesterday on Loomio email

How can I make threads "read" without opening every single thread? For example threads in the translation subgroup about languages I don't understand...

Umm, how do I mark conversations as read without clicking into them @robertguthrie @richarddbartlett @alanna ? That was the single most useful screen I used and I thought it was remaining unchanged.

Really hoping it's coming back as the view of all my groups discussions in a single page and having to click into a thread to get rid of the notifications feels like the bad old days with or without following.

phew, just found https://www.loomio.org/inbox is still active so i'm a happy camper - might be useful @jochenwalter

No, @joshuavial, this is not what I meant. With the Inbox button I can see all threads with unread comments. But there are also threads which I don't need or want to read and I like to have the inbox button clear when I've read all what is useful and interesting to me. Could I explain what I want? (Who can answer my last question? Only God or my "Alter Ego"? ;-))

also a bug or a problem came...

all the new discussions that are made you are following be default. and they are coming notifications and emails all the time!

@christaklis that's a new feature, you can configure in your settings now that you don't want this. Note that you can follow groups or just follow specific threads. I would recommend that you just follow specific threads in this group, and follow the complete group for small groups you make for things like holiday planning etc.

ok. thanks.

@richarddbartlett Feels a little odd that followed discussions that I've received a bunch of emails about get re-emailed in Yesterday on Loomio.

I disabled all email for now until there is a better solution. I propose that if I enable "Yesterday on Loomio" I am only emailed once a day, also for the followed ones. There should be a second choice like "email me every single action in followed threads"
What do the others think?

@jochenwalter do you mean you'd like a daily summary only of activity in threads you are following?

@joshuavial what would be your ideal "clear" or "mark as read" experience using the dashboard filters?

Would a classic feature using tickboxes (tick the ones you want and then click "mark as read" - also would have a "select all" option at the top) be what you're after? Seems like it would be kinda ugly but might be the right functionality.

I don't think we're going to have an easy way to order by group on the dashboard like there was on inbox for a little while. I think the easiest way to do that right now would be to visit each group and then filter by unread.

You are correct that the old Inbox is still active at http://www.loomio.org/inbox - we will leave it up there until we work the kinks out of following.

@alanna No, I would like to have the followed and the not followed in a daily summary. And if if I choose the second option "email me every single action in followed threads” then I need a daily summary of the not followed threads and a single mail about every single action of followed threads. Clear?

@alanna my ideal clear would be a cross next to each message which immediately removes it from the list and a button to clear all from a group.

I actually want it exactly like the inbox is currently and while I realise you've had feedback that it's confusing for some it is the most important part of loomio for me.

The biggest pain I have with the dashboard is all messages unsorted by group - it means a ton of context switching and it is a much easier cognitive task to be able to visually scan each group, choose the ones to read and dismiss the rest with a single click.

My frustration at having the inbox taken away was at the level of "I hate this tool and don't want to use it again" so I would suggest really being sure that others don't feel the same.

Can we have "When I'm @mentioned, or there is activity in threads I'm following." separated in two.
I like to be emailed if I'm specifically mentioned so I can address any questions etc right away, but I don't want to see all the activity in the threads I'm following unless I login to loomio. I really don't like getting the emails for all the threads I'm following.

I'm the same as tracey

+1 to that

https://www.loomio.org/inbox Thank feck for that.

I have given up on https://www.loomio.org/dashboard?unread=true

@joshuavial I'm with you. The /inbox makes my task easier. I love it. I am so glad I don't have what I imagine your inbox looks like.

@lbjoum @joshuavial

The inbox is Baaaack. Thanks for your patience and feedback.

@malcolmshearer @traceyambrose splitting the mentioning off of following now.

Yuss! Thanks @robertguthrie

@malcolmshearer @damiansligogreen @traceyambrose we've spit mention settings from following settings now. You're free!

Freedom!

Update

Thanks for the feedback everyone! All your comments were super helpful, and enabled us to know just what we needed to work on first to improve on the first release of Following and the associated email notifications.

Here are the changes we made today:

• Separate @mention from following notifications - now you have two different tick boxes in email settings
• if you are mentioned and were not already following the discussion, the first email you get will provide extra context so you know what the mention is in reference to.
• [square bracket] in subject line of emails so it's clear they are Loomio notifications
• included proposal title in new vote email so even if someone doesn't state a position it's clear what it's about.
• The inbox icon now links back to inbox instead of unread on the dashboard.
• The footer in email was hidden, now it's revealed - so everyone knows that they can reply by email and the link to change their email settings is more obvious

Thank you loomio people.

I wonder if it would be possible to integrate following & the email new discussions & proposals settings? I'd like to be emailed new discussions in those groups that I'm following (not them I ain't).

Keeping track of both following & group email settings is a lot to manage for my little head.

You use the follow group feature @matthewbartlett ?

Yeah

One observation: as you can see with this answer by mail, the answer by
mail funcionality still seems to have some problems, at least with the
style of answering from my email address. Otoh, it seems Facebook has the
same problems, so maybe it's just because of something specific my email
answer has... Anyway, I decided to answer here this way so you can see what
goes wrong (I observed it first with a closed discussion...). I also make
this answer a bit longer so you can see that the lines get cut off, which
is also quite ugly and hard to use. But that might be a thing from my
side... :(

2014-09-03 3:57 GMT+02:00 Matthew Bartlett (Loomio) <
notifications@loomio.org>:

Yeah

—
Respondu rekte al ĉi tiu retpoŝtaĵo aŭ vidu ĝin en Loomio
http://www.loomio.org/d/2jfAsd1x/feature-update-following-and-participating-by-email?utm_campaign=thread_mailer&utm_medium=email&utm_source=new_comment#comment-209513.
Ŝanĝi viajn retpoŝtajn preferojn
http://www.loomio.org/email_preferences?unsubscribe_token=EV6CaTFRCTxLKvszvuJy&utm_campaign=thread_mailer&utm_medium=email&utm_source=new_comment.

Thanks Joop :)

Rob is working on that problem right now!

Tell me if/when you need me to test it again ;).

@joopkieftelapingvi Give it a spin. I think I've fixed it.

Let's see then...

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. What is wise to say in a meeting is probably not a good filler text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. What is wise to say in a meeting is probably not a good filler text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. What is wise to say in a meeting is probably not a good filler text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. What is wise to say in a meeting is probably not a good filler text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. What is wise to say in a meeting is probably not a good filler text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. What is wise to say in a meeting is probably not a good filler text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. What is wise to say in a meeting is probably not a good filler text.

It seems to work okay now!

I sent a message to the specific hidden group, and there it still went wrong... :(

Joop I don't think the group will make any difference to how the email is parsed.. I wonder if we can look at the message itself.

I wonder if the name of the one I react to makes a difference, like when it has special characters, as mine has the ( and )...

Ignoru ĉi tiun mesaĝon, ĝi estas por klarigi ion al la programistoj.

2014-09-03 22:49 GMT+02:00 Batisteo (Loomio) :

Batisteo mentioned you while discussing “Jen diskuto por testi”

pri Asana ĝis en ĉi tiu grupo mi eĉ antaŭe ne aŭdis

@joopkieftelapingvi Oh, ĉu mi forgesis? Mi (re)sendas.

@lukaszzebrowski Jes, oni devas elekti inter gGrupoj aŭ Loomio por la parolada parto kaj la decidaroj.

Asana daŭre taŭgas por aldoni taskojn (ĉefe al si mem ), kaj konservi kelkajn projekt-longajn datumojn.

—

Respondu rekte al ĉi tiu retpoŝtaĵo aŭ vidu ĝin en Loomio ( http://www.loomio.org/d/Dq1HoyN7/jen-diskuto-por-testi?utm_campaign=thread_mailer&utm_medium=email&utm_source=user_mentioned#comment-210945 ). Ŝanĝi viajn retpoŝtajn preferojn ( http://www.loomio.org/email_preferences?unsubscribe_token=EV6CaTFRCTxLKvszvuJy&utm_campaign=thread_mailer&utm_medium=email&utm_source=user_mentioned ).

That is how it (I dare say consistently) appears in the closed group. I have to say though, unlike the messages I sent here, also Gmail seems to have a problem with it.

Hrrrmmm ..

I can't see a problem with linebreaks in that message but it does look like the system distinguish between the new and old parts of the email.

Yes, the linebreaks seems completely solved, sorry I didn't make that clear. The new and old parts seemed to be varying between here and there...

Good idea. Thanks for this option. ;-)

We've been using this option. It is very convenient, though it makes people who use signatures with lengthy disclaimers a nuisance... :) Would it be possible to clip signatures?

Glad you like it!

We do have signature clipping, but some of them are not recognised. It's a hard job to detect all signatures. I think adding two dashes (--) on a line by themselves, above the signature will help.

Ok, we removed those a while ago (google apps seems to add them as default). Let's re-add them :)

Thanks!

I have been trying to use the following feature to select specific conversations to get email alert.

A few times now, I went to dashboard and filter "Following" - open them all and deselect them all. I think there are defaults that re-select some of them as following. Perhaps when someone creates a proposal?

It would be best for me if the default was "Not Following", as then I could control the conversations I want to "Follow".

I have given up and turned off email settings "When there is activity in threads I'm following."

Thanks for the feedback @lbjoum, even when you're frustrated it's appreciated. I've had another coversation with someone who had a usecase like yours, it seems like a checkbox "Follow when participating" to allow you to disable the automatic following would suit you

Thanks @robertguthrie. "follow when participating" would still not work for me because I would not want to follow every conversation I participate in. I already get that in my inbox. I have the inbox as a bookmark and that is where I start loomio.

I check loomio a few times throughout the day whereas emails are always grabbing my attention. Because I get so many emails from loomio I switch them off in settings, but there are some conversations that I would like to be notified of, but I don't seem to be able to control that.

For me its like Joum described: I don't use email because it would be too much. I use dashboard with the "Following" filter, open them all and after I read them I open my inbox to open new discussions I might be interested and the rest > uncheck!

In my vision, this would allow you to do exactly that. This is a yes/no for "follow when participating" so you would be able to manually choose those threads to follow by email.

Sorry for me misunderstanding @robertguthrie. That would be great.

By default, you’ll also be emailed immediately with any new content, and you can reply directly to the emails and they will show up in the app

This seems like a great feature, but I would have it opt-in rather than opt-out. Enabled by default is ok for receiving emails, but people could get a surprise if replies via email (which is a medium most people assume is reasonably private) are suddenly published as a comment on an open public thread.

Case in point: https://www.loomio.org/d/UxMYpPXL?page=1#comment-271774

FWIW I had a reasonably tech-savvy person in a group I coordinate reply to an email notification thinking they were replying to me privately this week.

I actually think the answer to this isn't highly technical - it's styling the emails. If they had the Loomio logo on them and the comment was in a box clearly marking it as a comment reply on a Loomio thread, people would get it. That's how most other SaaS tools with email notifications seem to do it.

Alanna, I agree!

Yep next up on my design list is to add a bit of styling to the emails. I'm thinking a lightweight header like "[Logo] something happened on Loomio", then a box for the content, then a footer with the unsubscribe/unfollow/etc links in it.

@alanna That may help to some extent, but still does nothing to address the issue of the comment I linked above. It's perfectly reasonable to expect autoreplies to often contain emails and phonenumbers, neither of which should be published on a public forum without the author's explicit consent.

Which is what is being done here when you break it down. Publishing people's emails in public without explicit opt-in consent from users.

I STRONGLY believe this feature should be off by default.

I agree with Ed. When it's off by default and user turn it on by purpose he will be conscious about the effect.

@waelalsaad I think it's very likely that someone would turn on 'reply by email' for their account, then at some point in future turn on an Out Of Office responder anyway.

I'm reading up on inserting email headers so that Outlook and other email clients will know not to auto respond to our emails.

@waelalsaad I think it's very likely that someone would turn on 'reply by email' for their account, then at some point in future turn on an Out Of Office responder anyway.

I'm reading up on inserting email headers so that Outlook and other email clients will know not to auto respond to our emails.

@edgalligan I totally agree with your desired outcome (don't post auto-replies as comments) but I'm just not sure about the best solution. If as @robguthrie says we can find a way the system can know not to post them, that's better than trying to solve it via user preferences. As he said, many people will intentionally turn on reply by email, then go on vacation and put on an autoresponder.

I've added this to the roadmap inbox to discuss.

I've implemented some headers which tell Outlook and other clients that they should not auto respond.

Please let me know of cases where auto responders are still coming in after the 15th October.